Why working successfully across cultures requires less assumption and more curiosity
I’ve spent a large part of my working life talking about cultural differences. And over the years, I’ve started to dislike the expression.
Not because cultural differences don’t exist. Of course they do. Put a Norwegian, an Italian, a German and a Japanese executive around the same table and sooner or later, culture is going to show up.
But I don’t think the differences themselves are usually the problem. The problem is expectations.
We all walk into situations with an idea of what “normal” looks like: how a meeting should be run, how quickly a decision should be made, how directly you should disagree, how much small talk is appropriate before getting down to business, what a good leader should do and what it takes before you can trust somebody.
Most of the time, we’re barely aware of these expectations. Until somebody breaks them.
When difference becomes judgement
Imagine you’re in a meeting and someone openly challenges their boss. One person sees confidence and healthy debate. Another sees disrespect.
Someone spends the first twenty minutes of a business meeting talking about family, food and the weekend. One person sees relationship building. Another wonders why it is taking so long to get down to business.
Or a manager gives very little direction to a team member. The manager thinks, I trust you. You’re competent. The employee thinks, My manager has absolutely no interest in me.
Same behaviour. Completely different interpretation.
When people don’t behave according to our expectations, we rarely stop and think, Interesting. I wonder what’s going on here? We’re much quicker to reach for a judgement: rude, weak, aggressive, slow, arrogant, unprofessional.
That’s where culture gets expensive. Not in the difference, but in the judgement.
Those judgements influence who we trust and whose ideas we listen to. Silence gets interpreted as agreement when it may actually mean respect. A direct challenge becomes insubordination when it may simply be someone’s idea of honesty. Autonomy is intended as trust and received as abandonment.
One misunderstanding probably doesn’t matter much. Multiply them across teams, countries and time zones and they start to matter a great deal.
The danger of knowing too much about culture
There’s another problem I’ve noticed after more than 30 years of working across cultures. Learning about cultural differences can actually make you worse at working across cultures.
We learn that Germans tend to communicate more directly, that Japanese business culture traditionally places greater emphasis on hierarchy, or that Scandinavians generally prefer flatter organisational structures.
All useful information.
Until we meet Klaus, Yuki or Lars and decide we already understand them.
Then cultural knowledge stops being a tool and starts becoming a diagnosis.
I like cultural models. They help us see patterns that might otherwise be difficult to spot. But they are maps, and people aren’t maps.
Knowing something about a culture doesn’t mean we understand the individual standing in front of us. Nationality is part of the picture, of course. But so are personality, generation, profession, organisational culture and life experience.
The Italian engineer working for a Norwegian company in Singapore may have rather more going on than the word “Italian” can explain.
So by all means, learn about cultures. I’ve spent much of my career doing exactly that. But I increasingly think the purpose of cultural knowledge isn’t to give us answers about people.
It’s to help us ask better questions.
Curiosity beats certainty
These days, I’m less interested in long lists of things we supposedly need to know about Italians, Norwegians, Americans, Chinese or anybody else. I’m more interested in what we do when we don’t know.
You are never going to learn enough cultural rules to cover every person and situation you encounter. The alternative is surprisingly simple: ask.
How do you prefer me to challenge you if I disagree? When you say yes, are we actually making a decision? Would you rather I give you the background first, or get straight to the point? What does trust look like to you?
These are not sophisticated cross-cultural techniques. They are conversations. But they require us to accept that our interpretation of another person’s behaviour may be wrong.
And when we ask, intent matters. I’m asking because I want to understand. I don’t want to make assumptions. This may be different from what I’m used to, so help me understand how you see it.
Curiosity with positive intent says: I’m not trying to judge you. I’m trying to understand you.
If I understand what you expected from me, and you understand what I expected from you, we have something to work with. We may still disagree. In fact, I hope we sometimes do. But at least we’re less likely to misunderstand each other.
Keep the differences
The goal of working across cultures should never be to eliminate difference. I sincerely hope we never do.
Some of the most interesting, creative and occasionally frustrating moments in international work happen precisely because people around the table don’t see the world in the same way.
Different perspectives, assumptions and ways of solving problems can be incredibly valuable. But only if we are curious enough to understand where they are coming from.
So learn the frameworks. Study the patterns. Understand something about the cultures you work with. They can help you notice things you might otherwise miss.
But use that knowledge to become more curious, not more certain.
Because after more than three decades of working across cultures, I’ve arrived at a slightly paradoxical conclusion:
The more you understand culture, the less certain you should be about people.
About the Author
Pellegrino Riccardi is an international keynote speaker and cross-cultural communication expert who has spent more than three decades helping people work more effectively across cultures. Based in Norway, he works with organisations around the world on communication, leadership, cultural differences and navigating change in increasingly international workplaces.
